With the inauguration of Barack Obama, pundits and prophets from all across the political spectrum announced the end of race and racism. Yet under the shroud of The Dream achieved, sat Trayvon, Detroit, ICE raids, Voter ID laws, the birther movement, Shelby County v. Holder and a host of social conditions clearly colored by Americas racial reality but now made seemingly illegible by the claims of a post-racial society. Barreto and OBryant take up the daunting task to confront this critical moment not as an end but a beginning, a world in need of a new language for a new racial landscape. With courage and dare we say hope, these essays tackle the vex-ing theaters of war surrounding the presidents citizenship, his religion, his shifting status between too black and not black enough, and the meaning of all this for a multiracial America clinging tightly to its image as leader of the free world. The collection boldly demonstrates that only through an honest assessment of the Age of Obama, both its beauty and its ugliness, can we build any sustainable visions for a truly democratic future.

Davarian L. Baldwin, Trinity College

American Identity in the Age of Obama is a must read for scholars of race, ethnicity, immigration, presidential politics, and overall American poli-tics. This is a book that analyzes the dynamic role of Americas first black American president, and how his election has directly affected how the US is viewed internationally, how we discuss race in the 21st century, how we incorporate non-black and non-white individuals into larger discussions of the American polity, and how we view national identity through an increas-ingly more complex lens.

Christina Greer, Fordham University

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The election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States has opened a new chapter in the countrys long and often tortured history of interracial and interethnic relations. Many relished in the inauguration of the countrys first African American presidentan event foreseen by another White House aspirant, Senator Robert Kennedy, four decades earlier. What could have only been categorized as a dream in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education was now a reality. Some dared to contemplate a postracial America. Still, soon after Obamas election a small but persistent faction questioned his eligibility to hold office; they insisted that Obama was foreign-born. Following the civil rights battles of the twentieth century, hate speech, at least in public, is no longer as free-flowing as it had been. Perhaps xenophobia, in a land of immigrants, is the new rhetorical device to assail what which is nonwhite and hence un-American. Furthermore, recent debates about immigration and racial profiling in Arizona along with the battle over rewriting of history and civics textbooks in Texas suggest that a postracial America is a long way off.

What roles do race, ethnicity, ancestry, immigration status, and locus of birth play in the public and private conversations that defy and reinforce existing conceptions of what it means to be American?

This book exposes the changing and persistent notions of American identity in the age of Obama. Amlcar Antonio Barreto, Richard L. OBryant, and an outstanding line-up of contributors examine Obamas election and reelection as watershed phenomena that will be exploited by the presidents supporters and detractors to engage in different forms of narrating the American national saga. Despite the potential for major changes in rhetorical mythmaking, they question whether American society has changed substantively.

Amlcar Antonio Barreto is associate professor of Political Science at North-eastern University. He is the author of Nationalism and Its Logical Founda-tions (2009), Vieques, the Navy, and Puerto Rican Politics (2002), The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico (2001), and Language, Elites and the State (1998).

Richard L. OBryant is an assistant professor of Political Science and the Di-rector of the John D. OBryant African American Institute at Northeastern University. His research interests focus on science and technology policy and politics, urban and regional studies and politics, and urban and community technology. He published a chapter in Yigitcanlar, Velibeyoglu, and Baums anthology, Creative Urban Regions.

American Identity in the Age of Obama

Group identities have been an important part of political life in America since the founding of the republic. For most of this long history, the central challenge for activists, politicians, and scholars concerned with the quality of U.S. democracy was the struggle to bring the treatment of ethnic and ra-cial minorities and women in line with the creedal values spelled out in the nations charters of freedom. In the midst of many positive changes, how-ever, glaring inequalities between groups persist. Indeed, ethnic and racial minorities remain far more likely to be undereducated, unemployed, and incarcerated than their counterparts who identify as white. Similarly, both violence and workplace discrimination against women remain rampant in U.S. society. The Routledge series on identity politics features works that seek to understand the tension between the great strides our society has made in promoting equality between groups and the residual effects of the ascriptive hierarchies in which the old order was rooted.

Routledge Series on Identity Politics

Series Editor: Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., Rutgers University

1 Black Politics Today The Era of Socioeconomic Transition Theodore J. Davis Jr.

2 Jim Crow Citizenship Liberalism and the Southern Defense of Racial Hierarchy Marek Steedman

3 The Politics of Race in Latino Communities Walking the Color Line Atiya Kai Stokes-Brown

4 Conservatism in the Black Community To the Right and Misunderstood Angela K. Lewis

5 The Post-Racial Society is Here Recognition, Critics and the Nation State Wilbur C. Rich

6 Race and the Politics of the Exception Equality, Sovereignty, and American Democracy Utz McKnight

7 Barack Obama and the Myth of a Post-Racial America Edited by Kevern Verney, Mark Ledwidge, and Inderjeet Parmar

8 American Identity in the Age of Obama Edited by Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

American Identity in the Age of Obama

Edited by Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Taylor & Francis

The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

American identity in the age of Obama / Amlcar Antonio Barreto, Richard L. OBryant, editors. pages cm. (Routledge series on identity politics) 1. Obama, BarackInfluence. 2. National characteristics, AmericanHistory21st century. 3. United StatesRace relations21st century.4. United StatesEthnic relations21st century. 5. United StatesPolitics and government2009 I. Barreto, Amlcar Antonio.II. OBryant, Richard L. E908.3.A45 2013 305.8009730905dc23 2013024173

ISBN: 978-0-415-72201-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-72596-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-85858-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

In Memoriam John D. OBryant

19311992

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Acknowledgements xi About the Authors and Editors xiii

Introduction: The Age of Obama and American Identity 1 AMLCAR ANTONIO BARRETO AND RICHARD L. OBRYANT

1 Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity 14 AMLCAR ANTONIO BARRETO

2 Racial Identification in a Post-Obama Era: Multiracialism, Identity Choice, and Candidate Evaluation 42 NATALIE MASUOKA

3 The Son of a Black Man from Kenya and a White Woman from Kansas: Immigration and Racial Neoliberalism in the Age of Obama 70 JOSUE DAVID CISNEROS

4 Immigrant Resentment and American Identity in the Twenty-First Century 100 DEBORAH J. SCHILDKRAUT

5 Browning Our Way to Post-Race: Identity, Identification, and Securitization of Brown 133 KUMARINI SILVA

6 White Masculinities in the Age of Obama: Rebuilding or Reloading? 152 STEVEN D. FAROUGH

7 Exceptionally Distinctive: President Obamas Complicated Articulation of American Exceptionalism 175 JOSEPH M. VALENZANO III AND JASON A. EDWARDS

Contents

x Contents

8 Barack Obamas Foreign Policy Leadership: Renewing Americas Image 198 MARK A. MENALDO

9 The First Black President?: Cross-Racial Perceptions of Barack Obamas Race 222 DAVID C. WILSON AND MATTHEW O. HUNT

Index 245

How should we assess historic events such as the November 8, 2008 elec-tions? The editors of this project asked themselves this question, among others, in the aftermath of Obamas election. As academics we contemplated one set of possibilities. As so often happens among college professors, one dialogue led to another. And before we realized it we had formulated a project. On March 25, 2011 the first stage came to fruition with a one-day conference at Northeastern University entitled American Identity in the Age of Obama. The 2011 conference, co-sponsored and co-organized by the Northeastern University Humanities Center and the John D. OBryant African-American Institute, was the genesis of this book project.

The John D. OBryant African-American Institute endeavors to foster academic excellence, cultural awareness, and social responsibility among students. For years it has brought together students, faculty, and staff in the spirit of collaboration. We would like to express our profound gratitude to the institutes assistant directors Marion Mason, Keyla Jackson, Carrie Boykin, administrative assistant Mildred MiMi Hughes, head librarian Kantigi Camara, and counselor Rodney Sadberry for their support in orga-nizing the conference.

This venture was also co-sponsored and organized by Northeastern Univer-sitys Humanities Center. The Center was founded in 2008 to promote dialogue and intellectual cooperation across disciplinary boundaries in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We are deeply indebted to Founding Director Carla Ka-plan who, along with former Dean of the then College of Arts and Science James R. Stellar, spearheaded the Centers creation. We also extend our thanks to Associate Director Hilary Poriss, and the Centers staff: Nakeisha Cody, Jen-nipher Sopchockchai, and Allison Maria Rodriguez. We would like to express our thanks to Interim Dean Bruce Ronkin for helping to fund this project.

Outside of the OBryant Institute and the Humanities Center a number of professors were instrumental in propelling this undertaking. We appreciate the important contributions made by Mindelyn Buford II, Travis Gosa, and Dean E. Robinson.

Finally, we would like to say a few words about the late John D. OBryant. A tireless advocate for students from underprivileged communities, he served

Acknowledgements

xii Acknowledgements

as the president of the Boston School Committee and national chairman of the Council of Urban Boards of Education. He also served as Northeastern Universitys first African American vice president from 1979 until his pass-ing in 1992. If you are not here for the students you are in the wrong place was one of his famous quotes. His support was instrumental in maintain-ing and propelling the mission of the university and the African American Institute. Education was his passion while politics was his catalyzer. John OBryant would have been tremendously proud at the election of President Barak Obama. In 1993, on its twenty-fifth anniversary, the Institute was rededicated with his name. A beloved pedagogue and community activist, it is in his memory that we dedicate this book.

Amlcar Antonio Barreto is an associate professor of Political Science at Northeastern University. His research focuses on nationalism, ethnic poli-tics, and social movements.

Josue David Cisneros is an assistant professor of Communication at the Uni-versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on rhetoric, democratic theory, and race and ethnic studies.

Jason A. Edwards is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University. His research focuses on presidential rheto-ric, American foreign policy, culture, and international politics.

Steven D. Farough is an associate professor of Sociology at Assumption Col-lege. His research focuses on white masculinity, social psychology, and the sociology of race.

Matthew O. Hunt is an associate professor of Sociology at Northeastern University. His research focuses on race and ethnicity, social psychology, and inequality in the United States.

Natalie Masuoka is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts University. Her research focuses on American racial and ethnic politics.

Mark A. Menaldo is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sci-ences at Texas A&M International University. His research focuses on leadership and governance.

Richard L. OBryant is an assistant professor of Political Science and the Director of the John D. OBryant African-American Institute at North-eastern University. His research interests focus on science and technology policy, urban and regional studies, and politics.

About the Authors and Editors

xiv About the Authors and Editors

Deborah J. Schildkraut is an associate professor in the Department of Politi-cal Science at Tufts University. Her research focuses on ethnic politics and representation in the United States.

Kumarini Silva is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill. Her research focuses on the intersections of feminism, identity/identification, postcolonial studies, and popular culture.

Joseph M. Valenzano, III is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of Dayton. His research focuses on rhetoric, presidential communication, and terrorism.

David C. Wilson is an associate professor of Political Science and Interna-tional Relations at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on political psychology, research methods, public opinion on racial attitudes, and workplace politics.

IntroductionThe Age of Obama and American Identity

Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L . OBryant

In 2006 newsstands began selling a work written by a newly-minted ju-nior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Passersby could not sidestep such an unorthodox title The Audacity of Hope. Discussing hope, or any other emotion for that matter, is as old as weather-beaten hills. Nor did the release of yet another paperback from a candidate running for high of-fice faze us. After all, discount bins in one commercial establishment after another are still trying to unload the memoirs of politicos from previous electoral cycles. Still, the selection of such a title raised many eyebrows. Senator Obama proposed that we needed to embrace a more optimistic ap-proach; he challenged readers to believe in the possibility a brighter future. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama presented himself to the American public as the agent of that metamorphosis. Optimism is indeed a powerful emotive force, but during his first run for the White House many inside the Washington Beltway and on Main Street, USA, wondered whether lofty aspirations would be enough to elect the countrys first non-white chief executive.

Candidate Obama suggested that we first needed to embrace a new mind-set before we attempted to implement any reforms. Modifying government policies is no easy task. The Capitals corridors are littered with the tattered remains of bills that that never left the cozy recesses of their committees, which passed one chamber and failed to persuade the other, or were vetoed by the president. Yet amending, let alone casting out, deeply-entrenched at-titudes which sustain and even exacerbate many of those policies is another matter entirely. The mere fact of Obamas election and subsequent reelec-tion indicated that the country had turned a historic corner, particularly with regards to the ways in which the majority of Americans perceive the boundaries of their national identity. What does it say when a minority is elected to the highest office in a country that has suffered agonizing ethnic and rational divisions for centuries? The United States last faced such a ques-tion in 1960 with John F. Kennedys election. Listening to this Senator from Massachusetts one could hardly disregard his deep New England roots. But while looking at him one could forget that JFK was a religious minority, a Roman Catholic. Very few can say the same about Barack Obama. In many

2 Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

ways, the book in the readers hands is also about perceptionsparticularly those who belong to, and feel a part of, American society today.

As intrepid as Barack Obamas title, some might question the impudence of discussing American identity in the Age of Obama. The term age is a categorization reserved for legendary figures from bygone eras. This is not supposed to be the case with contemporary personalities, even after win-ning an important election. And yet the contributors to this volume contend that what happened in the November 2008 and 2012 presidential elections warrants such a designation. Obamas election and reelection as the forty-fourth president marked a major milestone in US history. Still up for discus-sion is the debate over how deep is that change. In the future, journalists and academics will have the luxury of analyzing the Obama presidency by combing through stacks of declassified memos and files. Theirs will be a far more nuanced interpretation of the first commander in chief born outside the contiguous 48 states. In years to come retired administration officials will undoubtedly share their candid perspectives on what occurred in the Obama White House outside the public limelight. And todays controversial topicsthe debt crisis, gay marriage, immigration, the 2010 health care law, terrorism, wars in Afghanistan and Iraqmay fade into the background as other controversies arise to consume the publics fascination. Such unfore-seeable shifts in popular opinion will alter our perception of the Obama administration. In years to come scholars will also have the benefit of years of polling data charting the ebbs and flows of the publics perceptions of this White House. Regardless of our contemporary take on the twists and turns of his administration, Obama secured his place in history as the first non-white president in the United States. In a country with a long and tortured history of interracial and interethnic tensions this is no trivial matter.

Let us not forget that the United States is also a country that historically extolled its immigrant past. Over two centuries ago St. John de Crvecoeur (1981: 81) wrote: There is room for everybody in America. In more recent times Massachusetts senator Edward M. Kennedy boldly proclaimed: Im-migration is in our blood. Its part of our founding story (J. Kennedy 2008: ix). Echoing the sentiments in the title of Obamas first book this lawmaker exalted: At the heart of the issue of immigration is hope ( Ibid., x). Indeed, President Obamas father was born and raised in Kenya. But thats not the immigrant saga that has plagued Obama from the moment he launched his campaign for the White House.

Since then there have been persistent claims from some of his most ardent political opponents that Barack Hussein Obama was born in an-other country and, hence, was constitutionally ineligible for the holding the presidency. Obama was not really one of us. They insisted, instead, he was a foreigner. These self-anointed guardians of the Constitutions Sec-ond Articlethe birthers blissfully omitted any reference to the fact that Obamas rival from the 2008 presidential race, Senator John McCain of Arizona, was the one candidate who was born outside the 50 states in an

Introduction 3

incorporated territorythe Panama Canal Zone. 1 Such persistent assertions about Obamas origins suggest that racial tensions endure in the American body politic alongside an unhealthy dose of xenophobia. But unlike previ-ous generations, these detractors, or at least the majority, are careful not to disqualify him based on raceat least not in public. This fringe move-ment may be the brashest manifestation of what Bonilla-Silva (2006) labeled color-blind racism. This debate, always silly and sometimes frightening, was infused into the political milieu of Obamas election and subsequent reelec-tion. It has inextricably woven its way into the fabric of the Obama presi-dency and his legacy.

FROM 1968 TO 2008

Like a legendary phoenix, the specter of the 1960s arose from the ashes in the course of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. Caroline Kennedy (2008), the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, publicly endorsed Barack Obamas candidacy and com-pared him directly to her late father. Her decision to support him over Sena-tor and former First Lady Hillary Clinton was not the last feature linking Obamas presidential run with the Kennedy era. Throughout the year 2008 several news outlets republished the rosy prediction uttered by Carolines late uncle, Attorney General and later Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Improv-ing interracial relations was a daunting and still unfulfilled mission. None-theless, RFK felt the winds of change were headed in the right direction. We have held out the promise that color shall no longer stand in the way of achievement or personal fulfillment or keep a man from sharing in the affairs of the country (Kennedy 1993: 143). More than once he publicly predicted that race relations were progressing to such a degree that he ex-pected a black president in the coming decades. Barack Obama was just a few weeks shy of his seventh birthday when RFK was killed. Four decades after Bobby Kennedys assassination his forecast came to fruition.

Race-relation idealists have locked horns with their more pessimistic counterparts who asserted that societys deep-seated prejudices had yet to be uprooted. Real progress, they insisted, was very far away. While Bobby Kennedy was sanguine about the upcoming course of interracial relations, his contemporary James Baldwin had a fundamentally different approach. This writer could not close his eyes to the persistent and anguishing reali-ties of segregation and the socioeconomic marginalization of Americans of African ancestry. Laws may have changed, but conventional attitudes and the plight of the disadvantaged endured. These phenomena were not limited to any one of the countrys regions. On this point, at least, James Baldwin and Robert Kennedy agreed. They reflected the depths to which African Americans were treated as second-class citizens in the land of their birth. In the aftermath of the Civil War laws were changed granting citizenship to all

4 Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

born in this country, but the chasm between formal membership in the polity and true acceptance remained wide indeed.

In an essay entitled The American Dream and the American Negro Baldwin reflected on Robert Kennedys comments, albeit irately. Without a doubt, Kennedys statements about the election of a racial minority to the White House sounded rather progressive, if not provocative, to the ma-jority of the electorate. Certainly it would be hard to imagine any main-stream politician, white or black, making such a bold prediction even in the 1950s. However, African American listeners had a very different take. On the streets of Harlem the Senators words were greeted with bitterness and scorn (Baldwin 1998: 718). In and around 125th Street neighbors and passersby viewed Senator Kennedys words as painful condescension.

Until the moment comes when we, the Americans, are able to accept the fact that my ancestors are both black and white, that on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity, that we need each other, that I am not a ward of America, I am not an object of missionary charity, I am one of the people who built the countryuntil this moment comes there is scarcely any hope for the American dream. (Baldwin 1998: 718719)

Hope and despair remain perennial endpoints in the never-ending de-liberations over the inclusion of historically marginalized groups. And the inauguration of the first African American president is an event both Obama supporters and detractors will exploitalbeit, in fundamentally different ways. Each will develop a distinct take on the unfolding American national story. Devotees of this commander in chief will attempt to portray the 2008 and 2012 elections as a new dawna vindication of Martin Luther King, Jr.s aspiration for a color-blind society (Joseph 2010: 4). In this version a new and optimistic chapter in the countrys history has begunone that will help to heal the deep wounds of its racially divisive past. We suspect that even some Obama detractors will utilize much of the same symbolism to contend that his election augurs the end of American racism. In this saga we can all move past discussions of race and inequality toward a color blind utopia reaffirming the guiding ideological principles upon which the coun-trys birth was founded.

A different interpretation, a fundamentally morose one, is already being penned by Obamas most fervent foes. It describes the day that man moved into the executive mansion. A heterogeneous bunch, these antagonists inflict their acrimony with different degrees of intensity. Rare are the ones who publicly denounce that man of color. The tang of such patently racist venom, a rather common phenomenon half a century ago, is far too bitter for con-temporary tastes. Still, the sentiment is far from dead. It remains alive and well in private spaces just outside the prying ears of the mainstream media. More common among these impassioned Obama adversaries are accusa-tions that he was born outside the United States and hence constitutionally

Introduction 5

ineligible to hold the highest office in the land. Beyond the constitutional requirement that the President must be native-born, the allegation of foreign birth is symptomatic of a more prevalent xenophobia at a time when most immigrants to the United States hail from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For these birthers, Obamas election was a national calamity. As journalist Will Bunch commented:

Barack Obama was the inevitable boogeyman that two generations of resentment politics in America had been leading up to, combing the no-tions that blacks benefiting from affirmative action were squeezing the white working class on one end and that elitistslike Obama the Har-vard-trained law professorwere now looking down on their plight. (Bunch 2010: 105106)

Leaving aside the policies promoted and implemented by this administra-tion, the uniqueness and historical significance of Obamas presidency more than justifies referring to a new age in the unfolding American saga.

READING THE AMERICAN CULTURAL ODOMETER

When assessing sociocultural change in the United States we cannot ignore the countrys starting point and its foundational contradiction. The Founders christened the American Revolution in the name of liberty. Thomas Jefferson (1993: 24) inscribed in the Declaration of Independence that an avant-garde order dawn had arisen on the western shores of the Atlanticone where all men were created equal. In the verdant forests of North America, Albions progeny could fulfill their destiny as free people. Democracy in America was juxtaposed to monarchical tyranny in Europe. This pact between the state and its people promised to embrace future Americans. Policymakers and ordinary citizens encouraged their cousins back in Europe to migrate and help to create a new society. European immigrants, particularly Protestants from the northwestern portions of that continent were expected to dissolve and become an integral part of an American society (St. John de Crve-coeur 1981: 68). This pact, however, was limited to those who looked like the Founders. Despite the depths of their multigenerational roots in North America, the fettered sons and daughters of African immigrants were cast out from that pact (Steinberg 1981: 42). The Book of Genesis recounts the original sin. Egalitarian American coexisted with race-based slavery from its very inception. Even those who were free in law were smeared with the stigma of bondage. Slavery, that ignoble institution, was far more than an economic pillar. It represented a deeply-entrenched societal norm. So potent was this idea that it maintained in bondage, both literally and figuratively, even the racially-mixed and publicly-unacknowledged children sired by lib-erty-touting Framers and all other slaveholders.

6 Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

Over time, public perceptions of the paradigmatic American underwent change. This process started to unfold in the nineteenth century. Particu-larly after the First World War, narrowly construed notions of the Anglo-Saxon ideal gave way to a broader sense of white unity (Alba 1990: 3; Jacobson 1998: 91). Yes, this represented change, but the essential hierar-chy privileging lighter skin color over dark endured. Clearly not all immi-grants were welcomed or accepted as good candidates for absorption into the American milieu. Chinese exclusion and the marginalization of Mexi-cans naturalized as Americans following the US conquest and annexation of Mexicos northern half reinforced this notion. Racism was a potent unifier in a country dominated by a heterogeneous amalgam of Europeans attempting to forge a new identity as Americans. The institutionalized in-feriority of the African elevated the status of all whites regardless of wealth (Finkelman 2003: 39; Harris 1985: 38). And this ideal, in turn, helped to suppress intra-white class conflict (Cobb 1969: ccxiii; Olson 2004: 1314; Roediger 1991: 1213). Despite the social and economic marginalization of African Americans, the vast majority of white Americans insisted that they resided in the land of liberty. As Vanessa Beasley (2004: 26) pointed out, the American people have learned how to live comfortably with their contradictions.

Observers will continue to debate how much of that change in attitude is substantive and how much is mere window dressing. There is a wide array of perspectives on the current state and future course of the relation-ships among the countrys various ethnic and racial communities. Optimists looked to the Supreme Courts rulings in Brown v. Board of Education, the era of its early implementation, and passage of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts as categorical evidence of positive momentum. In time, they insisted, Americans would see the light at the end of the centuries-long tun-nel called segregation and racial bigotry. Through this arduous processa modern-day revival of sortsthe American people would finally see the completion of the Founders ideological blueprint. Nostalgically optimists looked back to this Civil Rights golden age, the era of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, as a time when forward thrust was tangible and tomorrow looked bright. Reminiscence about this era is contrasted with the trepidation with which most white Americans perceived its successor. The unfulfilled aspirations of the classic Civil Rights era gave way to the rhetori-cal fury erupting from the Black Power movement.

Some of the most notable changes in public articulations of American identity since the time of Obamas birth include reinterpreting the Civil Rights movement and the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. in that so-cial revolution. Particularly in the early 1960s, Civil Rights campaigners were often accused of seditious fraternization with communist and other dangerous subversives. Decades after his assassination mainstream Ameri-can society recast King as a latter-day Moses leading every hue and color of American citizen out of the wretched abyss which was of the American

Introduction 7

apartheid. In so doing King and his comrades, activists routinely vilified in the mainstream media and government circles, were reassigned the roles of redeemers fulfilling the spirit of the Founders of 1776.

We are not surprised to read the words of those who habitually align themselves with the Civil Rights coalition. For instance, Bill Clinton (2004: 37, 64) described Kings 1963 I Have a Dream speech as inspiring and the forty-second president portrayed civil rights pioneers, such as the Little Rock Nine, as a symbol of courage in the quest for equality. It is more surprising to hear laudatory words coming from others who habitually shied away from civil rights activists. While he initially opposed the bill declaring Martin Luther King, Jr.s birthday a national holiday, Ronald Reagan even-tually signed it into law. In the early 1980s, Reagan (1989: 164) admitted that he and Reverend King did not share political philosophies; nonetheless they did share a deep belief in freedom and justice under God. This is a far cry from George Wallace (1963) who described integration, one of Kings central goals, as a false doctrine of communistic amalgamation or Richard Nixon (2008: 114, 115) who paid lip service to civil rights as a cause all the while accusing demonstrators who championed this cause of fomenting an atmosphere of hate and distrust. But now, things are quite different. The likes of Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (2011: 83) and Texas Governor Rick Perry (2010: 51) judge Kings efforts on behalf of ending racial discrimination and segregation as a noble struggle based on the same spiritual foundation laid by the countrys Founders. In the past the Republican Party may have dragged its feet on civil rights, said former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (2010: 287288), but by the early twenty-first century his party had caught up.

Historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (1983) described na-tional identities as invented traditions. The innate nature of ethnogenesis provides current and future narrators the luxury of reinterpretation and even outright fabrication (Roosens 1989: 161). Our time, the period fol-lowing Obamas election, marks a pivotal moment in the rewriting of that national saga. In the coming years the story of who belongs in the American nation will continue to evolve. Indeed, towards the end of his second inau-gural address President Obama shocked millions by bundling the Womens Rights, Civil Rights, and Gay Rights movements as crucial cornerstones in the countrys commitment to liberty.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truthsthat all of us are created equalis the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; . . . It is now our generations task to carry on what those pioneers began. (Obama 2013)

The 1969 Stonewall Riots were not the first major campaign in the struggle for gay rights; still, thats how the romanticized narrative of that struggle usually starts (Armstrong 2002: 62). Thus, even when it comes to

8 Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

introducing novel elements into the American national saga, Barack Obama sticks fairly close to conventional patterns.

THE CHAPTERS

Articulating national identity on the basis of observable ethnic and cultural traits is standard practice around the world. Particular religious doctrines, specific languages, physical features, and folk customs are employed to dif-ferentiate us from them. Indeed, throughout the course of US history a host of political activists and politicians have done so. Yet officially American identity has not been articulated by ancestry but ideology: liberty, democracy and egalitarianism. That duality has been a hallmark of American society despite the election of the countrys first black president. Has Obamas elec-tion changed public articulations of American national identity? Is his view of America shaped by the Black Nationalism of Malcolm X, as some have suggested, or the color-blind aspirations of Martin Luther King, Jr., or does he embrace another take on American-ness? In the first chapter Amlcar Barreto examines Obamas take on American identity. His unorthodox family history imbued him with a unique approach to these questions and opened the door to reinterpreting classic notions in a novel approach to American notions of peoplehood. Despite vigorous protestations from his right-wing critics, his approach to American national identity is far from a radical departure from the pattern set by his most recent predecessors.

The debate over Obamas identity as black or multiracial leads us to question others identities, including those who self-identity as mixed race or multiracial. At the time of his election, 2.2% of Americans identified with two or more racial categories. Assertions of nontraditional identities evoking a mixed race or multiracial background are more prevalent in so-ciety today, particularly among younger generations. The rise of multiracial identification is indicative of new social norms that govern racial identifica-tion which offer a more inviting environment for individuals to assert mul-tiracial identities. Yet, as a trend of multiracial self-identification grows, it demands the attention of those who self-identify with the established racial categories, such as white or black, who must then consider and respond to these mixed identities. In Chapter Two Natalie Masuoka examines how con-temporary American society judges those who opt to identify outside one racial category. She contends that as a general pattern whites tend to inter-pret multiracial identities with normative optimism about US race relations while racial minorities generally respond more unfavorably to the asser-tions of these identities. As a result, racial minorities will be more critical of multiracial identities and challenge the legitimacy of these identities. Using recent public opinion data, she examines the relationship between views on multiracial identities and other racial and political attitudes and compares how this relationship may differ across whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

Introduction 9

Barack Obamas 2008 run opened a fascinating public exchange over his blackness. With his black Kenyan father and white American mother Obamas lineage can be aptly described as racially-mixed. Yet he self-identi-fies as African American and is widely regarded as the countrys first black president. This perception stems from the socially constructed nature of racial identities, Americas malevolent racial history, patterns of racial formation such as the one drop rule, and contemporary patterns of racial classification and experience. In the third chapter Josue David Cisneros analyzes Obamas immigration rhetoric to show how it is driven by the same transcendent view of race and American identity that was so celebrated in his campaign. This celebrated public pronouncement of transcendence holds limited possibili-ties for sustained coalitions and progressive racial politics. Comparing this presidents immigration rhetoric to his administrations immigration policies, Cisneros will argue that the very discourse of universal and transcendent American identity frequently found in Obamas speeches and writings falls short of the particular struggles faced by immigrants and Latina/os. Increas-ing disaffection found in Latina/o and immigrant communities points to broader problems in transcendent (universal) discourses of American iden-tity purportedly proffered by Obamas election and speaks to the necessity for particularized political struggles in the continual fight for racial equality.

The Obama presidency has brought renewed attention to the meaning of American identity as well as to the contentious politics of immigration reform. Even though data show that many nonwhite Americans, immigrant and native-born alike, define the normative content of American identity the same as whites do, think of themselves as American, and differ minimally from whites in their sense of obligation, patriotism, and trust in political in-stitutions, many white Americans think otherwise. They believe that todays immigrants reject American norms. This belief generates immigrant resent-ment, which is similar to the racial resentment many whites have toward blacks, but differs in important respects that involve the nature of the norms being violated. Rather than being seen as lazyalthough some Americans do see immigrants that wayimmigrants today are seen as working quite hard. Yet rather than being praised for embodying the Protestant work ethic, they are criticized with claims that their devotion to work detracts from other im-portant facets of American identity, including active citizenship. In the fourth chapter Deborah Schildkraut develops measures of immigrant resentment. She compares it to racial resentment and to old-fashioned beliefs about the preferred racial and religious background of immigrants (a.k.a. ethnocul-tural resentment). She demonstrates that while immigrant resentment, racial resentment, and ethnocultural resentment all exist they are distinct concepts with both distinct and shared roots. She illustrates how immigrant resent-ment has a powerful influence over public opinion about immigration policy.

In Chapter Five Kumarini Silva examines what brown defined as an identification of deviance beyond a somatic identitymeans within the utopic idealism of the postrace era. By focusing on the controversy of the

10 Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

birth and upbringing of President Barack Obama, the chapter interrogates how Indonesia and the continent of Africa were and continue to be used as a way to mark his identity outside a US black-white binary. This subtle shift allows for an evasion of overtly racist rhetoric of opposition against Obama, and re-inscribes the racismthrough the lens of brown as a na-tional threat. The contemporary deployment of brown as identification, Silva contends, has in part become a way to evade the discomfort of talking about unresolved black/white race relations in the United States.

Until 2008 all American presidents traced their ancestry to Europe. In Chapter Six, Steven D. Farough asks how the age of Obama has impacted perceptions of masculinity within this rather large group. This chapter ex-plores three general trends, patterns which can be classified as a partial decline of white masculinity. The phrase partial decline signifies uneven changes in white masculinities, where there have been signs of minor loss with structural and symbolic advantages with gender, a reactionary mainte-nance of privilege in the context of race, and a progressive transformation in the area of fatherhood. First, there is a considerable corpus of research pointing out that some men are indeed suffering more in the Great Recession than women. Regarding race, many writers have highlighted white men as angry vanguards fighting against the Obama presidency. These authors pres-ent traditional notions of white masculinity as under assault by the existence of an African American president, increasing racial and ethnic diversity and immigration. Still, there is no significant evidence that white men are los-ing structurally based racial advantages. The final area, in the realm of fa-therhood and masculinity, views a positive trend where men have become more involved in raising children and taking on domestic roles, signifying a transformation in white masculinity. The net result of these uneven patterns strongly suggests that we need to further cultivate explanations and theories that take into account identities in a state of uneven development.

According to some pundits the inauguration of Barack Obama as presi-dent marked a fundamental shift in American political culture. One of the quintessential aspects of US political culture is Americas belief in its excep-tionalism. President Obama has received much praise and criticism for his discussions of exceptionalism. In Chapter Seven Joseph M. Valenzano III and Jason A. Edwards investigate how this president has rhetorically con-structed this tenet of political culture by trying to ascertain whether he has extended his predecessors beliefs in exceptionalism and/or he has fundamen-tally altered this important cultural component. These authors examine a series of President Obama speeches to determine what, if any, changes he has made to American exceptionalism. Examining how a president has extended and/or altered American exceptionalism provides an important barometer into fundamental changes within the United States political universe.

In the eighth chapter we expand our investigation by exploring American identity through the lens of US Foreign Policy. While domestic pundits have tended to ask how Obamas election has shaped Americans perception of

Introduction 11

themselves few have ventured to explore how his incumbency has altered other countrys views of the United States. His presidency marks a watershed mo-ment in American and world politics. He represents Americas multicultural-ism and its shifting identity. Since the time of the American founding, American identity has been an integral part of the image that the United States projects to the world. American leaders have consistently defined the national interest with an eye to upholding the American creed: freedom, equality, and demo-cratic government. As a result, they presuppose a stable American identity defined by core values when handling foreign affairs. Mark Menaldos chapter examines how Barack Obamas self-styled visionary leadership fits within this long established tradition of American leadership vis--vis foreign affairs. In addition, this author examines how his unique political vision seeks to reinvent Americas international image while shaping American history and identity.

And finally, we end this book with a question: Is Barack Obama black? This loaded question was asked repeatedly during the 2008 and 2012 presi-dential races. Pundits from across the ideological spectrum emerged from their raucous bickering without a consensus. As it turned out, so did the American public. How citizens racially categorize Obama reveals much about how we perceive the forty-fourth president. But this also shed light on the evolution of racialization in the US. On the one hand, due to half African and half Euro-American ancestry Obama can be aptly described as racially-mixed. Many do so. Yet he self-identifies as African American. This stems from the socially constructed nature of racial identities, Americas malevolent racial history, and patterns of racial formation such as the one drop rule. Despite this painful collective experience many African Americans question Obamas racial authenticity. And yet, many whites perceive Obama as other than truly black an attitude that made his candidacy more palatable to a subset of whites. These issues all point to the importance of understanding how and why people view Barack Obama as occupying one or another racial status or category in America. In chapter nine David Wilson and Matthew Hunt explore these issues by analyzing 2009 polling data from the Pew Research Centers Racial Attitudes in America II project. A host of factors including demographics, concerns about Obamas political focus on whites and blacks, perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of the nature of Obamas values, racial stereotypes, and respondents own racial identitiesshape how the public views the President in terms of race. In so doing, these authors shed light on the ways in which our social locations, identities, and views on racial and societal issues contribute to how we construct Obamas racial status and by extension other Americans who may self-identity as black.

NOTE

1. Naturalized citizens are eligible to run as candidates for a vast array of local, state, and federal offices except for the American presidency. Article Two of the U.S. Constitution states that the president must be a natural born Citizen.

12 Amlcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. OBryant

Children born to a citizen parent are entitled to U.S. citizenship under jus san-guinis. Obamas mother was a U.S. citizen as were both of McCains parents; hence, both 2008 presidential candidates were covered under this principle. Citizenship by place of birth, the principle of jus soli, was not guaranteed until the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Obama was born in the State of Hawaii while McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Does an overseas territory qualify someone as native born? The courts have yet to decide on this matter. In the early twentieth century the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Insular Cases that there was an important distinction between incorporated territories (Alaska, Arizona, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, and New Mexico) and the overseas unincorporated territories. While both sets pertain to the U.S. government only the incorporated territories are an integral part of the county (Gorrn Peralta 1995; Torruella 1985). It is quite fascinat-ing that in the course of the 2008 presidential election the birthers fixation on constitutional qualifications for holding the highest office focused solely on Obama while they turned a blind eye to a potential problem associated with McCains birthplace. This could have been an issue with 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater who was born in Arizona three years before statehood, save for the fact that the Arizona Territory was incorporated by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 (Ngai 2004: 5051).

REFERENCES

Alba, Richard D. 1990. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Armstrong, Elizabeth A. 2002. Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 19501994. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baldwin, James. 1998. Collected Essays. New York: Library of America. Beasley, Vanessa B. 2004. You, the People: American National Identity in Presiden-

tial Rhetoric. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2006. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the

Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Bunch, Will. 2010. Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, Hi-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama. New York: HarperCollins.

Clinton, Bill. 2004. My Life. New York: Vintage Books. Cobb, Thomas R. R. (1858) 1969. An Historical Sketch of Slavery from the Earliest

Periods. Detroit: Negro History Press. Finkelman, Paul. 2003. Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South: A

Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford / St. Martins. Gingrich, Newt. 2011. A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism

Matters. With Vince Haley. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. Gorrn Peralta, Carlos I. 1995. Historical Analysis of the Insular Cases: Colonial Con-

stitutionalism Revisited. Revista del Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico 56(1): 3155.

Harris, J. William. 1985. Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society: White Liberty and Black Slavery in Augustas Hinterland. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 1998. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immi-grants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Introduction 13

Jefferson, Thomas. (1944) 1993. The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jeffer-son. Edited and with an Introduction by Adrienne Koch and William Peden. New York: Modern Library.

Joseph, Peniel E. 2010. Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama. New York: BasicCivitas Books.

Kennedy, Caroline. 2008. A President Like My Father. Editorial. New York Times, January 27, 18.

Kennedy, John F. (1964) 2008. A Nation of Immigrants. Revised edition. New York: Harper Perennial.

Kennedy, Robert F. 1993. RFK: Collected Speeches. Edited and Introduced by Edwin O. Guthman and C. Richard Allen. New York: Penguin.

Ngai, Mae M. 2004. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nixon, Richard M. 2008. Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents. Edited and introduced by Rick Perlstein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Obama, Barack H. 2013. Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. Accessed January 21, 2013. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barack-obama

Olson, Joel. 2004. The Abolition of White Democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Perry, Rick. 2010. Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Reagan, Ronald. 1989. Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Roediger, David R. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso.

Romney, Mitt. 2010. No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. New York: St. Martins Press.

Roosens, Eugeen E. 1989. Creating Ethnicity: The Process of Ethnogenesis. New-bury Park, CA: Sage.

St. John de Crvecoeur, J. Hector. (1782) 1981. Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Edited and with an introduction by Albert E. Stone. New York: Penguin Books.

Steinberg, Stephen. 1981. The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity and Class in America. Boston: Beacon Press.

Torruella, Juan R. 1985. The Supreme Court and Puerto Rico: The Doctrine of Sepa-rate and Unequal. Ro Piedras, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Wallace, George C. 1963. 1963 Inaugural Address of Governor George C. Wallace. Alabama Department of Archives & History. Accessed January 11, 2012. http://www.archives.state.al.us/govs_list/inauguralspeech.html

Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity

Amlcar Antonio Barreto

1

Following a major tremor seismologists warn the public at large to brace for aftershocks. Without a doubt, the 2008 US elections represented a ground-shaking event in American political life. One of the resulting convulsions was the rise of the Tea Party movementthe vanguard opposition to the new administration. Despite its efforts this movement failed to unseat him. Obamas reelection four years later indicated that this political shake and quiver was not just a one-time fluke. Still, the venomous tone with which his most ardent opponents assail Obama leave many questioning the degree to which large segments of the American public accept a president unlike all of his predecessors.

In light of the tumultuous history of US racial relations, the election and subsequent reelection of the countrys first African American president is undoubtedly a pivotal moment. His two presidential victories were causes for joyous celebrations in some quarters. His adversaries were expectedly disappointed. Nonetheless, among Obamas political rivals was a subset that was profoundly unsettled, one that believed the presidency was an office re-served for a particular segment of the citizenry. Many will point to Obamas election as evidence that the country has surpassed the racial tensions that marked its first two and a quarter centuries. Others, whether supporters or critics, will dismiss such an assertion out of hand, claiming, instead, that replacing the ships captain is no guarantee of a fundamental change of course. Obamas meteoric arrival on the national stage provides us with a golden opportunity to reexamine the contentious debate over the essence of American national identity.

The motto E Pluribus Unum one out of manyrhetorically embraces all who commit to the republics founding principles of liberty, democracy, and egalitarianism. A commitment to a shared set of civic ideals, we are told, serves as the epoxy binding the federations basic building blocks. But from the start daily practices, social attitudes, and government policies have conspired to constrain national membership, de jure and de facto. Since the countrys founding, full membership has been restricted on the basis of racial, cultural, and even confessional traits. A recurring debate since the countrys naissance, among ordinary citizens and policymakers alike, is the

Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity 15

expansiveness of those inherited parameters. This state of affairs has en-trenched a rather schizophrenic national identityit is defined as ideologi-cal by some, particularly in the government; an alternative definition limited Americans, to varying degrees, based on their racial, ethnic, confessional, or other inherited attributes; and yet another hybrid notion blended elements of the first two. Obamas tenure invites us to discuss to what degree articu-lations of American identity have changed or whether it has changed at all.

DEFINING A YOUNG NATION

On rare occasions an academic field of inquiry is profoundly transformed by the publication of one work. Infrequent as they are, these scientific revo-lutions fundamentally alter the way in which the scholarly community ap-proaches a particular topic (Kuhn 1970). The studies of biology and physics were forever transformed by Darwin and Einstein, respectively; in the same spirit the study of nationalism changed fundamentally following the pub-lication of Andersons (1983) now classic tome. Earlier definitions of this phenomenon relied on an extensive enumeration of cultural and historic features differentiating groups from one another. For example, Stalin (1935: 8) defined a nation as a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a com-munity of culture. Such a characterization leaves observers in the pursuit of a rather extensive and often incoherent laundry list of ethno-cultural traits capable of differentiating one community from another. Anderson (1983) sidestepped such earlier approaches and defined a nation, succinctly, as an imagined political community.

First, the nation is an imagined or contrived entity. It is possible to know everyone in a hamlet, perhaps even a village, but this is not so with every fel-low national. And yet, compatriots are capable of recognizing one another. In sync with Anderson, Hobsbawm (1983: 7) described imagining national peoplehood as an invented tradition. The notion of imagination and inven-tion speak to nationalisms artificial nature. As a fabricated entity the nation can be created, and different societal actors have vested interests in forging the nation in dissimilar fashions. Its engineered nature leaves nationalist ac-tivists with the uncomfortable suppositionone they usually dismiss out of handthat there was a time before national identities, and that their sense of communal bonds is engineered.

Second, Anderson depicted nations as political phenomena. Nationalists believe their people are imbued with the inalienable right to live within a shared politico-administrative edifice. In the case of minorities, their aspira-tions could be mild requests for greater autonomy from the central state. Alternatively, they might adamantly insist on independence from a state dominated by another ethnic community. In the case of ethnic majorities the tactic often switches. As the group at the top it seeks to impose national

16 Amlcar Antonio Barreto

uniformitya homogeny limited to the parameters of the states majoritythrough such varied tactics such as marginalization, assimilation, or forced expulsion of minorities. It is precisely this political dimension that differen-tiated nationalism from the related concept of ethnicity (Eriksen 1993: 6).

Lastly, nationalism is founded on a supposition that members pertain to a community bound by familial ties: a macro-extended family. Every group member, nationalists assume, is a distant cousin. But on what basis do na-tionalists make such a presumption? Communal ties are assumed based on shared features. Objectifying national identities on the basis of observable ethno-cultural traits is the norm. Without birth certificates or any other state-issued documents co-nationals are more than capable of identifying one another thanks to patent features such as language, folk customs, reli-gion, and phenotypical characteristics (Handler 1988: 1115). These mark-ers set the parameters for national membership differentiating us from them. Nationalisms nature is such that these discriminating markers are recur-rently fetishized as the living embodiment of identity and group survival.

American identity has been habitually presented as one of the great excep-tions to this rule. Historically the countrys official national identity has been presented as ethnically neutral (Connor 1994: 79). Thus Lipset (1990: 26) insisted that the nature of American identity was ideological rather than ethnic. American-ness was based on the degree to which one internalized the countrys guiding principles: antistatism, individualism, populism, and egali-tarianism. Kallen concurred. Respect for ancestors, pride of race! Time was when these would have been repudiated as the enemies of democracy, the antithesis of the fundamentals of the North American Republic (Kal-len 1998: 62). These were the principled convictions dividing liberty-loving Americans from their Crown-loving cousins on the eastern side of the Atlan-tic and in the Canadian colonies. For Myrdal (1962: 8), equality and liberty laid at the bedrock of the American Creed. As Lvy (2006: 251) said, while retracing Tocquevilles journey through the United States: It has always been this artifact, forged by people of diverse origins who had nothing in common but this sharing not of a memory but of a desire and an Idea.

Yet from the start these laudable principles were associated with a particu-lar subset of the larger population. Indeed, even contemporary writers have reiterated the connection between founding principles and ethnic or confes-sional traits. With great fanfare Huntington (2004) claimed the United States was founded on the bedrock of Anglo-Protestantism. He anointed White Anglo-Saxon Protestants the countrys founders, its staatsvolk and its raison dtre: America was created as a Protestant society just as and for some of the same reasons Pakistan and Israel were created as Muslim and Jewish societies in the twentieth century (Ibid. , 63). To soften the ethnocentric and racial implications of his thesis Huntington claimed he did not favor Anglo-Protestant people, per se, but Anglo-Protestant culture (Ibid. , xvii). But his depiction of Latinos, particularly Mexicans, as a threat to countrys unity (Ibid. , 229230) did not succeed in swaying his detractor (Lvy 2006: 229).

Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity 17

Despite Huntingtons statement about the ideological foundations of American identity, Lipset (2003: 330) confessed that at the time of countrys founding egalitarianism was limited to white men. Not being born of the same blood is not a liability, but an asset: Americans will constitute the first political community united by a choice of freedom over tyrannyor at least, whites from every part of Europe will do so (Zolberg 2006: 51; emphasis in original). Hence, the United States was not completely free at birth. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that not everyone was entitled to the same degree of liberty and freedom. Rich in dichotomies, from the time of the Battles of Lexington and Concord the country was both free and slave, inhabited with masters and servants, and filled with rich and poor (Zinn 2005: 50). This paradox between practice and rhetoric endured long after the 1776 Revolution.

Outside of the opening chapters in Genesis we do not see creation out of nothing. Nationalist mythmakers employed preexisting traditions (Geary 2002: 17). Motyl (2001: 59) stated: The point is that both invention and imagination presuppose preexisting building blocks on the one hand and their combination and subsequent transformation by inventors or imagin-ers into a novel end-product on the other. We cannot invent or imagine ex nihilo. The early American settlers did indeed arrive on the shores of the Atlantic with preexisting perceptions who belonged within their core group. By the late eighteenth century leaders and followers were weaving these ideals into the fabric of a nascent national identity. Before their departure from the British Isles settlers had already developed notions of a Protestant us vis--vis a Catholic them (Colley 1992; Knott 1993). The menacing other was both domestic, particularly in Ireland, and foreign, in the case of Spain and France. Pan-Protestantism as a cornerstone of British identity allowed the faithful to reinterpret themselves as a new chosen people (Cherry 1998).

From time of the first settlements this belief in divine selection took on racial undertones. And that dynamic was already at play before African slaves were brought to Jamestown in 1619. For instance, in the early seven-teenth century Governor Bradford (2006: 44) of the Plymouth Colony clas-sified Native Americans as savages. Although he converted Pocahontas to Christianity, Reverend Alexander Whitaker still classified the countrys aboriginal population as naked slaves of the divell [ sic ] (in Cherry 1998: 32). Not all founding clerics shared this blatant disdain for the countrys first peoples. Roger Williams (2008: 158), the founder of the Providence Planta-tion, later the colony of Rhode Island, strongly objected to labeling Native Americans as savages or heathens. But Williams was exceedingly progres-sive in contrast to most European thinkers of his era, and his perception of the continents indigenous peoples was a minority view.

American identity was unique, the founders claimed, because it sprang from shared ancestral connections and a common ideological spirit. In the early 1800s Tocqueville (1969: 307308) observed that most Americans came from essentially the same British stock, adhered to a common faith,

18 Amlcar Antonio Barreto

and clung to a common set of laws. But the most direct expression of that two-pronged supposition is found in John Jays Second Federalist. The fu-ture Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court said:

. . . Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united peoplea people descended from the same ancestors, speak-ing the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and cus-toms, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence. (Hamilton, Madison & Jay 1961: 38)

Jays statement was not an isolated utterance. In the 12th and 14th Fed-eralists James Madison extolled that the American people were united in an affinity of language and manners and there was a kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens (Hamilton, Madison, & Jay 1961: 94, 104). Smith referred to this interpretation of American identity, an ex-egesis fraught with incongruity, as the multiple traditions thesis. American political culture, he contended, was based on a complex pattern of appar-ently inconsistent combinations of the traditions, accompanied by recurring conflicts (Smith 1993: 558). For Holloway (2011: 111), this back and forth between diverging perceptions is a clear indication that American identity was, from the start, rather ambiguous.

From the start there were disagreements as to what kind of immigrants were desirable. During the debates on the 1787 Constitution, Colonel George Mason, a delegate from Virginia, attacked slavery. His anxieties were not centered on the morality of owing slaves, but on how their pres-ence would influence new European arrivals. Slavery made every master into a petty tyrant and since slaves perform manual labor, the kind usu-ally undertaken by recent immigrants, their presence discouraged the immi-gration of whites who really enrich and strengthen a country (Ketcham 1986: 162). In terms of immigration, future Americans would only come from respectable Europeans, said Madison, and he did not mean every-one from that continent (Ibid. , 157). Certainly Anglo-Saxon immigrants fit the bill. For Jefferson (1993: 273274), love of liberty was ingrained in the British settlers who inherited that philosophical proclivity from their Germanic forebears. 1 Anglo-Saxons were hard-wired for love of liberty, thought Jefferson. The same did not hold for all whites. Immigrants from absolute monarchies could not shake their inclination towards autocracy. In time their children would become citizens and elect like-minded representa-tives transforming laws into a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass (Ibid. , 204). English immigrants were a different matter. Jefferson wrote: Our laws, language, religion, politics and manners are so deeply laid in English foundations, that we shall never cease to consider their history as part of ours, and to study our laws in that as its origin (Ibid. , 555).

Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity 19

Founders differed as to where precisely to draw the line. Franklin ex-pressed a strong proclivity towards British immigrants. From his perspec-tive Africans, Asians, and Native Americans were tawny while southern and eastern Europeans were too swarthy (Franklin 1987: 374). 2 German immigrants were certainly light-skinned; but the Deutsch, a people strange in language and custom, were arriving in threateningly large numbers. 3 Ut-tering an attack still deployed against newcomers, Franklin accused the Germans of underselling English labor (Ibid. , 445). On the other hand, Jef-ferson did not look kindly on all British transplants. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention deleted from Jeffersons earlier draft a reference to the Scotch and foreign mercenaries sent to invade and destroy us (Jefferson 1993: 27). 4 The Founders undoubtedly wanted immigrants from Europe, but there was no consensus on who was sufficiently English or white. The end result was an open door policy for European immigrants from the founding until the 1920s.

There was greater consensus regarding nonwhites. Native Americans and African slaves . . . both suffer the effects of tyranny, and, though their afflictions are different, they have the same people to blame for them (Tocqueville 1969: 317). From a Lockean perspective indigenous peoples were not true owners of the land, but merely inhabitants in the state of nature. Thus, European usurpation was justified as commandeering real estate from natura (Ibid. , 280). For Hamilton, echoing the sentiments of Governor Bradford and Reverend Whitaker from the early 1600s, the first Americans were savage and our natural enemies (Hamilton, Madison, & Jay 1961: 161). Similarly Jefferson (1993: 198) banished his countrys barbarous autochthonous peoples. Celestial forces could perform the white mans bidding. Franklin (2003: 198199) wrote that perhaps Providence, through the introduction of alcohol among a people extremely apt to get drunk, could wipe out native peoples for settlers. Such unashamedly racist statements by major American political figures extended throughout the nineteenth century. As Theodore Roosevelt (1963: 184) put it, western lands were occupied by none other than sav-age tribes. Hence, the white conquest of the North American continent was undertaken for the benefit of civilization and in the interest of man-kind (Ibid. , 183).

Native Americans were expelled by force of arms. On the other hand, the American economy parasitically savored the fruits of slave labor. Slaves, like Native Americans, were cast out of the body politic. In the 54th Federalist the countrys fourth president categorically stated: Slaves are considered as property, not as persons (Hamilton, Madison, & Jay 1961: 336). Like Madison, Jefferson was also a slave owner. African Americans, free or slave, were deemed innately inferior to whites and the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government (Jefferson 1993: 243, 49). Madisons predecessor insisted that, . . . negroes, in fact, should not be considered as members of the State, more than cattle, and that they have no more interest

20 Amlcar Antonio Barreto

in it (Ibid. , 30). And yet owners were content to tally slaves for the purpose of census enumeration. 5 As Hannah Arendt (1994: 297) put it:

Slaverys crime against humanity did not begin when one people de-feated and enslaved its enemies (though of course this was bad enough), but when slavery became an institution in which some men were born free and other slave, when it was forgotten that it was man who had de-prived his fellow-men of freedom, and when the sanction for the crime was attributed to nature.

Not every nineteenth-century observer turned a blind eye to the incongru-ity of an official ideology boasting of liberty wrapped around an unflattering reality-limiting freedom. Lorenzo de Zavala, a Tocqueville contemporary, also wrote a travelogue chronicling his observations of American life early in the nineteenth century. Born in the Yucatan, Zavala later served as interim Vice President of the Republic of Texas. Love of liberty and the zealous de-fense of the freedom to worship, the right to express ones beliefs, and the demand for an equitable legal system were fundamental to understanding the stability of the US institutions he much admired (Zavala 2005: 188190). Yet, Zavala was aghast by the racial segregation he witnessed. Such social separation was so complete it banished all blacks. Mexico, the country of his birth, abolished slavery when it declared independence from Spain in 1810. Still, he was not blind to the racism that endured long after independence, and he freely admitted that Mexican society was far from egalitarian. Never-theless, at least all were equal in the eyes of the law and the church. In Mexico there were no separate Catholic churches based on race or ancestry unlike the houses of worship he witnessed in the United States (Ibid. , 1617). Likewise, while the upper classes in Mexico were overwhelmingly white, there were no designated racial ghettoes or segregated neighborhoods as there were in the United States. The colored people have their separate homes, hotels, and churches; they are the Jews of North America (Ibid. , 90). Even free blacks were shunned in a country proudly touting liberty.

How do we resolve the inconsistency between an official national identity liberally laced with references to equality alongside exclusionary practices and attitudes? Mydral (1962) referred to this paradox as the American Di-lemma. The United States provided freedom and equality for the dominant racial group, all the while turning a blind eye to the tyranny inflicted on others (Saxton 2003: 120; Van den Berghe 1967: 18). Europeans were wel-comed into a regime founded on Herrenvolk egalitarianism, while the remainder were consigned to the lower castes (Van den Berghe 1965: 64). But not all Europeans were automatically admitted into this privileged club. Beyond melanin, immigrants had to become white (Ignatiev 1995)usually by contrasting themselves with black Americans. Deviations from Anglo conformity were tolerated in the private sphere of home and even houses of worship, not in the mainstream public and governmental spheres.

Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity 21

Within a couple of generations European immigrants cultural differences with Anglo-Americans dissipated. This is often described employing Israel Zangwills now classic melting pot thesis: America is Gods Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming (Nahshon 2006: 287288). Indeed, within the framework of whiteness immi-grants had only to change their surname in order to erase their heritage and reinvent themselves as Anglo-Saxons (Waters 1990). Federal policymakers even exported Anglo conformity to the racially heterogeneous overseas ter-ritoriesa directive they refused to abandon until the mid-twentieth century (Barreto 2009). For Herberg, the melting pot thesis is wishful thinking. What we have, he contented, is a transmuting pot where disparate European ele-ments are transformed into idealized Anglo-Saxons (Herberg 1983: 21).

Nonwhites, particularly African Americans, were expelled from this framework. Just before joining the Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall said: When our Constitution was written it said, We the people. It actually meant, We the some of the people (Marshall 2003: 190). Toni Morrison agreed. American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen (Morrison 1992: 47). Americans of even partial African an-cestry were transformed into a classic archetypethe anticitizen (Olson 2004: 43). Immigrants learned this very quickly. 6 Over time most Ameri-cans learned to live comfortably with the contradictions inherent in their laudable claims of liberty and egalitarianism emanating from the bosom of a racially unequal regime and society (Beasley 2004: 26). This process is inherent to prejudice, which Cullingford (2000: 237) described as a form of neurotic rationality.

And yet many American leaders, including those associated with the Civil Rights era, habitually employed the countrys all-embracing ideologi-cal principles against the forces of exclusion. Little could the Founders have imagined that their haughty ideological ethics would be drawn upon to challenge the racially segregated society they passionately endeavored to sustain. For instance, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1986: 71) commented: The American people are infected with racismthat is the peril. Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic idealsthat is the hope. While doing wrong, they have the potential to do right. Like the Christian story of the prodigal son, civil rights campaigners hoped for redemptionthe dream that the wayward would see the errors of their ways.

Given the founders sentiments it might seem surprising that American identity was not officially articulated in terms of ethnic, racial, and cultural traits. Tempting at this might appear, objectifying American national iden-tity on such a basis would have been a suboptimal option. Nationals, from ordinary citizens to those in the apex of authority, may have noticeably dis-tinct notions of nationhood. Still, elites, particularly in the intelligentsia and those intellectuals hired by the state, have a greater capacity to disseminate their take on the nation and its boundaries than societys rank and file. In the

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case of American identity, most of the early mythmaking intellectuals hailed primarily from New England (Zelinsky 1988: 144146). The first order of business for ethnic entrepreneurs engaged in delineating the frontiers of national belonging is to single out us from them (Barreto 2001). Secondly, elites endeavor to define the nation in such a way as to preserve their status at the helm of society. That may explain why different sets of elites within the same society articulate the nation in distinct, if not contradictory, ways.

Regarding the origins of a distinctly American identity, the menacing others were the British, not slaves or Native Americans. Could other groups serve as a national foil? The number of European immigrants originating outside the Anglo-Irish Isles was quite small, save for a few enclaves such as the Germans in Pennsylvania and the Dutch in New York. The regime in London was for decades the countrys primary rival. Great Britain and the United States fought against one another in 1776 and 1812. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom main-tained diplomatic relations with the Confederacy. Throughout the nineteenth century the two were locked in multiple disputes over the future Canada-US boundary. And until the First World War both the United Kingdom and the United States attempted to expand their respective spheres of economic and military influence throughout the Americas. While the level of threat percep-tion varies considerably over time, the United Kingdom stood out as the most persistent challenger to US interests at home and in the near abroad.

Descended overwhelmingly from Anglo-Irish settlers, the midwives of the 1776 Revolution could not easily differentiate themselves from their Brit-ish cousins given their scores of palpable commonalitiesa common Eng-lish language, Protestant Christianity, and a shared Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Instead, logically, a monarchical England was juxtaposed to liberty-loving Americans. Denied the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman heritage, the na-tion turned to Greece and Rome (particularly to Rome, the most powerful republic in history) for symbols it might adapt to its own uses. The eagle, both a Roman and an American bird, furnished an equivalent for the British lion (Nye 1966: 68). Meanwhile, racial and ethnic characteristics remained an in-house device used to differentiate genuine white and Protestant citizens from the inauthentic other. Nested inside this civic wrapper was a racial, eth-nic, and cultural identity that perennially excluded nonwhites and for gen-erations sidelined certain white Christians and Jews from genuine national membership. This ideological-cultural dualism would haunt the common voter and their elected officials throughout the course of American history.

IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN FAITH

Conquerors of a sparsely-populated continent, many early British settlers as-pired to forge a new society that traversed the Appalachian frontier. Indeed, the so-called Scotch-Irishnewcomers from Northern England and Southern Scotland, as well as Irish Protestantswould play a critical role in populating

Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity 23

the lands west of the Appalachian mountains (Fischer 1989; Leyburn 1962). Fulfilling this westward expansionist ambition was impossible without a critical mass of native-born and immigrant settlers who would uncompro-misingly push aside indigenous peoples and reseed North America in the im-age of Northwest Europe. 7 This entailed implementing a liberal immigration policy. Actually, to be more accurate, it meant failing to enact an immigra-tion policy, thus opening the floodgates to a multitude of European arrivals (Tichenor 2002: 5253). 8 Persisting waves of immigration from the nine-teenth through the early twentieth century prompted passionate discussions over the evolving nature of American society. These debates underscored that not all immigrants, not even all white newcomers, were welcomed.

Still, official mythmakers professed that immigrants were welcomed with open arms. This was the gist of the story popularized by J. Hector St. John de Crvecoeur in his Letters from an American Farmer, originally published in 1782. An immigrant from France to Canada, he subsequently settled in Pennsylvania. His non-British ancestry was not important, he insisted, since Americans were a blend of European peoples (St. John de Crvecoeur 1981: 68). Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world (Ibid. , 70). He was a Roman Catholic in a Protestant-majority country. But this did not matter. Religious persecution may be a hallmark of life back in Europe, but in American such a prejudice simply evaporates on the long journey to this new land (Ibid. , 76). North America was a new Eden.

Generations later St. John de Crvecoeurs optimistic forecast found new life in the writings of Mary Antin. Her 1912 autobiography, Promised Land, restated the legend that Europeans could be remade upon arrival in their new country. While her work was criticized for being too rosy it played, none-theless, a pivotal role in molding how Americans perceived their national identity (Parini 2008: 1, 234). As Antin (2006: 812) described the land of her birth, the Pale of Settlements was a site for persecution. In contrast to the Czars realm, America was the setting for redemption. As a new American she joyfully clung to those traits popularly associated with this new identity, such as learning to speak English, revering the American Revolution, and idolizing George Washington (Ibid. , 208, 222225). In a gesture some might describe a heresy she modified the Passover prayer for a return to Jerusalem into Next yearin America! (Ibid. , 141). Her adopted country was the one place where her personal story of survival and achievement could be fulfilled.

Despite Antins and St. John de Crvecoeurs hopefulness, immigrant ex-periences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were inconsistent and far from blissful. Josiah Strong was a prominent nineteenth-century figure who openly challenged the countrys policy of admitting undesirable newcomers. This celebrated pastor blasted immigration as an ominous source of unadul-terated evil. After all, open-door immigration allowed into the country people who could undermine American values: Catholics who were more loyal to a foreign Pope than to the US president, new European-born Mormon converts,

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socialist agitators, and those with loose morals who supported the liquor traf-fic (Strong 2009: 4243). Their numbers added dangerously to the growth of citiesthe epicenters of the most un-American and un-Christian ideals (Ibid. , 43). His ideal America was also devoid of Mexicans and Native Americans (Ibid. , 151). Reviving Jeffersons principles regarding the connections between ideology and ethnic origin, Strong proclaimed those of British and Germanic heritage were innately lovers of liberty (Ibid. , 159). Accordingly, pure spiri-tual Christianity was rooted in the Anglo-Saxonsa pure Teutonic people and a great missionary race (Ibid. , 159160). Protestantism was innately suited to a freedom-loving people in contrast to the despotism associated with the Papacy (Zolberg 2006: 133). However, Strongs pan-Protestant utopia had clear limits; it excluded the Church of Latter Day Saints. Founder Joseph Smith (1995: 36, 204) extolled the United States as the promised land and applauded the blessings and privileges of an American citizen. As was the case with many contemporaries, Joseph Smith (Ibid. , 87) and his successor Brigham Young (1992: 132133) cast out blacks from their ideal American nation for they were tarnished with the biblical curse of Ham. Still, despite their whiteness, Anglo-Saxon origi